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Abstract This paper evaluates whether the experience of marital breakdown during the life course is associated with the likelihood of exiting from homeownership, and whether this association varies across Europe. In line with previous research on the short- and medium-term housing and economic consequences of divorce, we find that for European men and women alike, this life event is associated with a lower likelihood of being a homeowner in later life. This negative association furthermore varies across institutional contexts, as indicated by: the housing regime (in particular access to mortgage credit); welfare state support; and female employment. In a context of increasing divorce rates and a stronger reliance on housing wealth as a form of welfare provision, our findings may have important policy implications. In many countries, homeownership forms part of the pension mix and hence contributes to economic security. Other benefits relate to housing quality, security of tenure and independence.

Introduction Separation and divorce have become important life-course events, with a growing share of the population affected by their economic, social and psychological consequences (e.g. Amato, 2000). Across Western countries, the 1970s heralded the end of the ‘golden age of marriage’: while marriage rates declined and the average age at marriage rose, the numbers of people cohabiting and having children outside of marriage increased (e.g. Kiernan, 2003). The idea of ‘marriage for life’ was further eroded by increasing divorce rates, as the legal, social and economic barriers to marital dissolution were lowered. Across the European Union (EU-27), the crude divorce rate increased from 0.8 per 1000 persons in 1965 to 2.1 per 1000 persons in 2007. Since 2008, the crude divorce rate has declined slightly, but this rather reflects the fact that fewer people are legally married and does not indicate a decline in partnership dissolution (European Commission, 2013). Studies in the United States (US) and Europe have mainly focused on the financial consequences of divorce (e.g. Andreß et al., 2006, Holden and Smock, 1991 and Uunk, 2004), documenting that relationship dissolution entails a sharp decline in women's household income. This has been related to women's more limited participation in paid labor and to their lower earnings; and to the fact that divorced mothers are often the main caretaker of children. Welfare benefits, alimony payments and/or child maintenance cannot offset the loss of men's earnings and of scale economies (Andreß & Hummelsheim, 2009). Limited access to childcare furthermore restricts mothers’ abilities to remain in or to enter full-time employment in order to maintain pre-divorce living standards (e.g. van Damme, 2010). Men are less likely to suffer from financial strain following divorce, although more recent studies show that they also experience negative economic consequences (Aassve et al., 2009, Kalmijn, 2005 and McManus and DiPrete, 2001). Research has also looked at the housing outcomes of divorce. These are entangled with the financial consequences, and hence to some extent gender-specific (e.g. Dewilde, 2009 and Feijten, 2005). The general pattern is mixed, however, as housing outcomes of divorce are also the result of legal practices regarding the division of marital property and the custody of children (e.g. Gram-Hanssen and Bech-Danielsen, 2008, Joseph and Rowlingson, 2011 and Mulder and Wagner, 2010). However, upon relationship dissolution both men and women struggle to maintain their ‘pre-divorce’ position in terms of tenure, affordability, quality and type of housing (e.g. Dewilde, 2008 and Feijten and van Ham, 2007). Most comparative research so far has used prospective panel data, and has concentrated on the short- or medium-term consequences of relationship dissolution.1 Initially, studies relying on panel data focused on the period immediately following divorce (e.g. DiPrete and McManus, 2000 and Uunk, 2004). As more data became available, it became possible to follow divorcees for longer time periods, usually about 10–15 years (e.g. Andreß et al., 2006 and Jansen et al., 2009). The current paper, however, focuses on the long term by asking whether divorce experience is associated with homeownership in later life, for those who have ever owned a house. Although the importance of homeownership as a form of old-age insurance differs cross-nationally (e.g. Castles, 1998), for most older Europeans the owner-occupied home is the largest asset they possess and a source of economic security. Outright (non-mortgaged) homeownership provides older people with a housing service that is cheaper compared to renting a similar property on the private market. Homeownership also insures people against housing cost inflation and involuntary residential mobility. Outright ownership can moreover be used in order to supplement pension or care needs. Most older Europeans are, however, reluctant to trade down or to use reversed mortgages ( Angelini, Brugiavini, & Weber, 2011a). They are emotionally attached to their home, and it provides them with choice, independence and control ( Elsinga & Hoekstra, 2005). As homeownership is an important determinant of well-being for older people, our first research question is whether the short- and medium-term economic and housing consequences of divorce for European homeowners, as illustrated in previous research, are carried over through the life course and into later life. A second aim of this paper is to explore variation across European countries in the association of divorce experience with later-life homeownership. Do the tenure outcomes of divorce for homeowners vary systematically across institutional contexts – represented by welfare state arrangements, female employment regimes and housing regimes? To this end, we identify indicators representing contextual arrangements at different historical times, which are hypothesized to influence the housing and economic consequences of divorce. We evaluate cross-level interactions between divorce experience and these contextual arrangements and the likelihood of later-life homeownership for a sample of ever-married respondents who have ever owned a house since establishing their own, independent household. Empirical analyses are based on 10 Western European countries included in SHARELIFE, the third wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

Conclusion and discussion The negative effect of divorce on the economic standing of women, and to some extent also of men, has been documented by numerous studies. In this study we asked whether divorce has long-term consequences by looking at homeownership in later life, for a sample of ever-married respondents who have ever owned a home. Our findings suggest unequivocally that the negative consequences of divorce for homeowners are not easily overcome and are carried over into later life, even when this life event occurred a long time ago: those who have experienced divorce along their life course are less likely to be homeowners in later life. Broadening the scope from income to other economic consequences reveals that both men and women are affected by this life event. While the negative association of divorce with later-life homeownership is clear, our study also identifies the conditions under which such an effect can be moderated. We examined institutional arrangements which are hypothesized to mitigate the housing and economic consequences of divorce: access to credit, female employment, and the availability of welfare support. The latter arrangements are often associated with female economic independence, allowing women to establish and maintain their own household. Clearly, the effect of marital breakdown is conditioned by the structure of the housing market, in particular access to mortgage credit, allowing respondents to either sustain (by renegotiating more suitable mortgage terms) or reenter homeownership. Interestingly, mortgage credit is more consequential for men than for women. This could be related to differences in paid labor and in terms of different patterns of repartnering between the genders – men more often stay in fulltime employment upon divorce and tend to remarry faster than women. Men also remarry younger wives that may have fewer resources upon marriage, but allow them access to credit more easily. Women tend to repartner less and later and, hence, have fewer opportunities to accumulate wealth for reentering ownership after losing their home upon divorce. For women, cross-national differences in the access to mortgage credit are less consequential. Alternatively, women may recover by marrying older, more established men – which renders them less dependent on the credit market. This interpretation needs to be examined in future research. As for the economic factors, we find that in countries where women are widely involved in paid employment and where the welfare state provides more generously for those in need, the negative association of divorce with later-life homeownership is reduced. These findings point to the importance of institutional support in facilitating the recovery of men and women after divorce, both in the short run (as prior studies have suggested) and in the long run. While previous studies found that income support is more effective in shielding women from the income consequences of marital breakdown in the short run, our results show that in the long run employment support is more important. Female labor also matters to some extent for men, who manage, with the contribution of women's wages and state support, to better their life conditions – perhaps because they also have to provide less financial support to ex-partners. Our findings also point to the importance of women's economic resources and their contribution to the family. An alternative interpretation of the female labor market effect for women may be that female labor matters more for women who repartner than for women who maintain an independent household. Future research should focus on how later-life consequences of marital breakdown are mediated through the interaction between contextual arrangements and subsequent life-course trajectories of men and women upon divorce. Female labor possibly may be less an indicator of economic independence than of the potential for women to pool their income with that of a new partner. The importance of female employment may hence be more salient for men and women who repartner than for men and women who remain single. Consequently, differences between respondents who repartner and respondents who stay single may be larger than differences between men and women. Despite its limitations, this study contributes to the existing literature on several accounts. While comparative studies on the economic consequences of divorce have mainly focused on the income consequences for women, in this paper we have looked at the association between divorce experience and homeownership as an important indicator for (economic) wellbeing in later life. We have shown that this approach reveals long-term effects for both genders. Studies on the housing consequences of divorce have more often made use of retrospective life history data, allowing for a longer time horizon. Most of these studies are, however, limited to single countries. In this paper we have shown that the consequences of live events such as divorce for the subsequent housing trajectory vary across institutional contexts. Even though our macro-level predictors are only crude approximations of the underlying institutional arrangements, we have also shown that the short-term impact of specific institutional arrangements might differ from the long-term impact. Finally, this paper also identifies some policy concerns: in countries where housing assets might become more important in terms of welfare needs or in terms of ‘getting by’ on a daily basis, the loss of housing wealth upon divorce potentially endangers the economic wellbeing of divorced men and women, and their children, in new ways.